Keyword Planner

A good Keyword Planner is one of the most Important Tools that you will need as an Online Marketer. Before we are able to write articles with quality content, we first have to do keyword research to find keywords by using a keyword tool.

A reputable keyword research tool such as SEMrush helps to discover what your readers want. We can then write blog posts that provide value to them and help answer their questions.

Keyword – What is it?

What are keywords? A keyword is what we type into the search bars of search engines such as Google, Yahoo or Bing. It could be to gain information, or to learn more about a product or service.

For Search Engine Optimization ( SEO ), in order to appear on the first page of search results, our keyword research needs to be thorough and precise. Articles that successfully rank for primary keywords are able to get more leads, traffic and profits.

Tip:

We need to find the keywords that have a good search volume, but at the same time are not too difficult to rank. If we are new to this, we won't want to be fighting with the big boy veterans in the industry.

Finding the perfect specific set of keywords can be difficult. That is why Online Marketers need a reliable keyword planner tool such as SEMrush to provide accurate keyword data and successfully find the keywords.

Keyword Research with SEMrush

Keyword Tool – Getting Started with SEMrush

In this article, we will be demonstrating how to do keyword research with SEMrush, the best keyword tool in the market today.

Besides having one of the best keyword results database, SEMrush is also able to display keyword difficulty and discover related long tail keywords that may have very low competition.

Currently, SEMrush is providing a 7 days FREE trial for new marketers to get a feel of this great tool, before deciding if they want to get the pro version. To get started, sign up for a free account here.

Dashboard Page – Click for Clearer and Larger Image

Keyword Research Tool – SEMrush Table of Contents:

Dashboard & Overview

Phrase Match

Related Keywords

SEO Content Template

Once logged in, we will see Dashboard page as shown above. Enter your desired keyword into the yellow highlighted bar ( just where the Lollipop is pointing ). For example, you may key in a broad search term such as ‘saltwater fish’. This is especially helpful if we still had no clue what our customers want to buy or what exactly they are looking for.

SEMrush Free Trial – Enter your keyword below:

We will then reach the Overview Page as shown below. As we can see, it shows 4 different reports for my main keyword ‘saltwater fish’. I will explain this in more detail.

Overview Page – Click for Clearer and Larger Image

Country:

We can choose which countries we want to target for our keyword research project. It is highly advisable to choose a country or a region. This will make our focus stronger and help to identify our target audience.

Organic Search:

This report shows the monthly estimated number of search queries in Google. In this case, it shows 33.1k searches which is a huge number. It also shows that 29.1m web pages are now ranked for this term. This means that there is stiff competition. We will discuss about this later.

Paid Search:

This report shows how much money marketers are paying to rank in Google. It shows CPC which means the average cost per click of their ads. Useful if we wanted to do paid ads on Google.

Trend:

This report shows the google trends of related keywords. It is helpful as it tells us if a product is sold all year round, or if it is seasonally sold at just certain times of the year. For example, Christmas trees are sold the most in December when it is closer to Christmas.

SEMrush Free Trial – Enter your keyword below:

Keyword Generator

Tip

SEMrush keyword tool is particularly good as a keyword generator to help us write quality content. We need to generate a sufficient mix of main and long tail keywords for our keyword research to see which keywords are easier to rank.

Tip: SEMrush keyword tool is particularly good as a keyword generator to help us write quality content. We need to generate a sufficient mix of main and long tail keywords for our keyword research to see which keywords are easier to rank.

Click for Clearer and Larger Image

Phrase Match Report: We will now explore the bulk of the main keywords which have high volume. In SEMrush, this is called ‘Phrase Match’. This set of keywords were generated when we first entered our main keyword ‘saltwater fish’.

In the phrase match column, we will click the button ‘View Full Report’, as shown above. Once clicked, we will reach the Phrase Match Report page. Here, we see search results that display a long list of keyword. As we can see from the below diagram, these main keywords show high search volume but also show high keyword difficulty.

Phrase Match Report – Click for Clearer and Larger Image

Keyword Difficulty ( KD ): An estimated figure that shows how hard it is to rank for an organic keyword. The higher it is, the harder it is to rank in Google. Click on top of the row, on the word ‘volume’, to display columns in ascending or descending order.

Com: Shows the competition for a keyword in Google paid ads. 1 means the highest and 0.01 means the lowest. Quite useful if you plan to do paid ads in your online marketing strategy.

Keywords – How to Select the Best Main Keywords

Now, we will discuss how to choose the best keywords with the highest search volume but lowest competition. The first line shows ‘Saltwater Fish’. Even though it may have high search volume, it may not translate into any immediate sales.

This is because people who search for this, may most likely, only be looking for information. However, this keyword could be good to focus on if what we want are leads or sign ups via our email auto responders. Readers who like the information they read for ‘saltwater fish’ may sign up for our newsletters to get updates on this topic. This could also eventually lead to sales.

If the plan is to make money online fast, then we should select profitable keywords. In the same phrase match report, these are keywords such as ‘saltwater fish for sale’ and ‘saltwater fishing gear’. Potential customers who key in such search terms into the search bar are most likely ready to buy. They are just deciding where they want to buy from and it could be you.

Keyword Research – How to Find Long Tail Keywords

Long tail keywords are also referred to as semantic keywords. We must also target them, as they are easier to rank and tend to be less competitive than their broader term counterparts. Long tail keywords may have lesser search volume by themselves, but when added up they still make up a huge number. They also tend to be more specific and targeted. We will discuss how to find them using SEMrush keyword tool.

Tip:

Best part of finding long tail keywords: They tend to help us discover related keywords that we would have never thought of. Those with very low competition but sufficient search volume. In other words, untapped pure gold for us to grab.

In SEMrush, we can do key word research on long tail keywords when we click on ‘Related Keywords’.

SEMrush Long Tail Keyword Tool – Click for Clearer & Larger Image

In the above diagram, we can see some new related keywords which did not surface earlier such as ‘saltwater fish store near me’. For example, there are 4400 monthly searches for the term ‘saltwater fish store near me’. It has a very low keyword difficulty of 44.63, which means it will be very easy to rank. We can target local customers who are looking for the nearest saltwater fish store.

Tip:

This is an untapped keyword that not many marketers know of, which explains the low competition. If we target these keywords, we would likely find great success!

Content Marketing – SEMrush SEO Content Template

Last but not least, we will discuss about the benefits of content marketing using the SEMrush SEO Content Template tool.

What is Content Marketing?Content Marketing is the process of writing good quality content for our readers and be able to keep them on our website or book. It could be content written for entertainment or information, or it could be to help solve our readers’ problems. When we are able to write good content that gives great value to our readers, we will usually get leads, followers, sign ups or sales.

SEMrush SEO Content Template works to analyze content of the top 10 ranking websites in Google for our set of target keywords. You will then receive tips and recommendations on how best to write SEO friendly content.

We will need to enter either a specific keyword, or a number of keywords. In this example we will use 3 keywords: ‘saltwater fish for sale’, ‘saltwater fish’, and ‘saltwater fish store near me’. We then choose which country we want to target. We will then be brought to the next Keyword Search page as shown below. Let me explain in more detail.

Semantically Related Keywords: As we can see from the diagram, SEMrush has recommended a long list of long tail / semantic keywords. If we add these into our content, it will help us rank better for on-page SEO. It will also ensure to keep our content relevant and reminds us to write quality content according to what our readers are looking for. But you don’t have to add them all in. Just aim to only include the keywords that are most relevant to your content.

Backlinks: Based on your chosen keywords, SEMrush will recommend a bunch of websites that we should try to acquire backlinks from. These websites are highly relevant to our choice of keywords. Being able to get backlinks from these same niches will help our content rank better in Google.

Readability: This score tells us if our content is easy to read, or if it is difficult to understand. Writing shorter sentences usually makes easy reading.

Text Length: Based on our competition, this is the recommended text length to write our content. For example, if most of our competitors write 1000 words, we should aim to be better than them and write more than that. However in order to outrank them, we should not only write more. We must also write better quality content.

Keyword Planner Tutorial – Summary

Thanks for reading this article on SEMrush’s Keyword Tool. We hope that we have equipped you with the knowledge and skills needed for the proper way to do keyword research in your SEO campaign. Note: You may choose to just apply the skills that we have shared, but use another keyword tool such as the one by Google. I use SEMrush simply because it is the best all-in-one keyword tool.

Tip: Remember, it would be unwise to simply just choose keywords with the highest average monthly search volume. This is because the intense competition from the veteran websites may be too overwhelming, especially for new aspiring marketers.

No doubt, it will be wiser to go for less competitive keywords that are easier to rank in search engines. Once you have successfully ranked for these long tail keywords, you would have likely already earned some money, leads and also some domain authority. It would then be the right time to target the more competitive keywords with the help of SEMrush keyword planner.

Feel free to share your thoughts. Contact us via this link. In the meantime, you can try entering a keyword to explore in the box below.